"Healthy?" demanded Sharon.

"Healthy enough till she had them twins. Always puny after that. Took to her bed and pa.s.sed on when they was four. Dropped off the tree of life like an overfruited branch, you might say. Winona and Mis' Penniman been mothers to the twins ever since."

"The record seems to be fairly clear," said Gideon.

"If he hasn't inherited that queer streak for religion," said Harvey D., foreseeing a possible inharmony with what Rapp, Senior, would have called the interests.

"Thank you, Sarah--we were just asking," said Gideon.

"You're welcome," said Sarah, withdrawing. She threw them a last bit over her shoulder. "That Dave Cowan's an awful reader--reads library books and everything. Some say he knows more than the editor of the _Advance_ himself."

They waited until they heard a door swing to upon Sarah.

"Other has the gumption," said Sharon. But this was going in a circle.

Gideon and Harvey D. ignored it as having already been answered.

"Well," said Harvey D., "I suppose we should call it settled."

"Overchancy," said Gideon, "but so would any boy be. This one is an excellent prospect, sound as a nut, bright, well-mannered."

"He made an excellent impression on me after church to-day," said Harvey D. "Quite refined."

"Re-fined," said Sharon, "is something any one can get to be. It's manners you learn." But again he was ignored.

"Something clean and manly about him," said Harvey D. "I should like him--like him for my son."

"Has it occurred to either of you," asked Gideon, "that this absurd father will have to be consulted in such a matter?"

"But naturally!" said Harvey D. "An arrangement would have to be made with him."

"But has it occurred to you," persisted Gideon, "that he might be absurd enough not to want one of his children taken over by strangers?"

"Strangers?" said Harvey D. in mild surprise, as if Whipples could with any justice be thus described.

Gideon, however, was able to reason upon this.

"He might seem both at first, I dare say; but we can make plain to him the advantages the boy would enjoy. I imagine they would appeal to him.

I imagine he would consent readily."

"Oh, but of course," said Harvey D. "The father is a n.o.body, and the boy, left to himself, would probably become another n.o.body, without training, without education, without advantages. The father would know all this."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'I CAN ALWAYS FIND A LITTLE TIME FOR BANKERS. I NEVER KEPT ONE WAITING YET AND I WON'T BEGIN NOW.'"]

"Perhaps he doesn't even know he is a n.o.body," suggested Sharon.

"I think we can persuade him," said Harvey D., for once not meaning precisely what his words would seem to mean.

"I hope so," said Gideon, "Pat will be pleased."

"I shall like to have a son," said Harvey D., frankly wistful.

"Other one has the gumption," said Sharon, casting a final rain of cigar ash upon the abused rug at his feet.

"The sands of the Whipple family were running out--we renew them," said Gideon, cheerily.

CHAPTER VII

The ensuing week was marked for the Cowan-Penniman household by sensational developments. To Dave Cowan on Monday morning, standing at his case in the _Advance_ office, nimbly filling his stick with type, following the loosely written copy turned in by Sam Pickering, the editor, had portentously come a messenger from the First National Bank to know if Mr. Cowan could find it convenient that day to give Harvey D.

Whipple a few moments of his time. Dave's business life had hitherto not included any contact with bankers; he had simply never been in a bank.

The message left him not a little disturbed.

The messenger, Julius Farrow, a bookkeeper, could answer no questions.

He knew only that Harvey D. had been very polite about it, and if Dave couldn't find it convenient to-day he was to say when he might find it convenient to have a conference. Dave felt relieved at hearing the word "conference." A mere summons to a strange place like a bank might be sinister, but a polite invitation to a conference at his convenience was different. He put down his half-filled stick. He had been at work on the _Advance_ locals for the Wednesday paper, two and three-line items to tell of the trivial going and coming of n.o.bodies which he was wont to set up with an accompaniment of satirical comment on small-town activities. He had broken off in the midst of perpetuating in brevier type the circ.u.mstance that Adelia May Simsbury was home from normal school over Sunday to visit her parents, Rufus G. Simsbury and wife, north of town.

"I'll go with you," Dave told Julius Farrow. "I can always find a little time for bankers. I never kept one waiting yet, and I won't begin now.

Ask any of em--they'll tell you I come when called."

Julius looked puzzled, but offered no comment. Dave doffed his green eye-shade and his ap.r.o.n of striped ticking, hastily dampened his hands in the tin washbasin and wiped them on a roller towel rich in historic a.s.sociations. He spent a moment upon his hair before a small, wavy, and diagonally cracked mirror, put on his blue cutaway coat and his derby hat and called, "Back in five minutes, Sam," casually into the open door of another room, where Sam Pickering wrestled with a fearless editorial on the need of better street lighting. It seemed to Dave that five minutes would amply suffice for any talk a banker might be needing with him.

In the back office of the First National Bank he was presently ensconced at a shining table of mahogany across from Harvey D. Whipple and his father--the dubious trousers and worn shoes hidden beneath the table so that visibly he was all but well dressed.

"Smoke?" asked Gideon, and proffered an open cigar case.

"Thanks," said Dave, "I'll smoke it later."

He placed a cigar in the upper left-hand pocket of the eminently plaid waistcoat from whence already protruded the handle of a toothbrush and a fountain pen. He preened his moustache, smoothed his hair, waited.

Harvey D. coughed in a promising manner, set a wire basket of papers square with the corners of the table, and began.

"We have been thinking, Mr. Cowan, my father and I--you see--"

He talked on, but without appeasing Dave's curiosity. Something about Dave's having boys, he gathered, and about the Whipples not having them; but it occurred to Dave again and again as Harvey wandered on that this was a discrepancy not in his power to correct. Once a monstrous suspicion startled him--this conference, so called, was shaping into nothing less than a proposal on behalf of the person he had so carelessly saluted the day before. It was terrifying; he grew cold with pure fright. But that was like some women--once show them a little attention, they expected everything!

Gideon Whipple mercifully broke in while Harvey D. floundered upon an inconclusive period. Gideon was not nervous, and saw little need for strategy with this rather vagabondish fellow.

"In short, Mr. Cowan, my son offers to adopt that boy of yours--make him his own son in name--and opportunities and advantages--his own son."

So it was only that! Dave drew a long, pleasant breath and wiped his brow. Then he took a pencil from the table and began to draw squares and triangles and diamond patterns upon a pad of soft paper that lay at hand.

"Well--I don't know." His eyes followed the pencil point. Nor did he know until it presently developed that the desired adoption was of the Merle twin. He had supposed, without debate, that they would be meaning the other. "You mean Merle," he said at last on some leading of Gideon's.

"To be sure!" said Harvey D., as if there could have been no question of another.

"Oh, him!" said Dave--there was relief in his tone. "You're sure you mean him?"